Linux printing: much done and more to do (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Linux printing: much done and more to do (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 11, 2006 1:35 UTC (Sat) by Junior_Samples (guest, #26737)
In reply to: Linux printing: much done and more to do (Linux.com) by sjj
Parent article: Linux printing: much done and more to do (Linux.com)

Darn good point!

ALSA is a mess. I am unaware of any canonical definitive guide to ALSA. There is, however, a huge incoherent mish-mash off half-finished and/or out of date "readmes" and "howto" guides.

ALSA is the poster child for how not to do open source software. It is complicated, unreliable embarrassment to the Open Source community. The committee which designed it should hang their heads in shame.

On the other hand, the OSS sound system which preceded ALSA was simple and reliable for what 99% of the community wanted to do. But ALSA was written for the 1% who are audio hobbyists with a craving for the novel and peculiar.

If there ever were software which cried out for a good O'Reilly opus (i.e. not one of their "quicky" hacks), it is the ALSA sound system.

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Linux printing: much done and more to do (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 11, 2006 4:14 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I will admit that I don't understand ALSA and don't know anyone who does, or good documentation,
I think ALSA works better in almost all cases than the OSS drivers. When both were under active
development I found that ALSA had better hardware support, also I've found ALSA drivers to be
more reliable and work consistanly across several different kinds of audio hardware where each OSS
driver is its own unique entity with different options, different supported input and output formats,
etc. Sometimes it seems that for things to work each application needed to know about the special
quirks of each OSS driver to get things working in an optimal state.

That's how I remember it anyway, I haven't used OSS drivers in years and haven't had any ALSA
related troubles.

Linux printing: much done and more to do (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 11, 2006 5:17 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Definately. Except for a certain number of sound cards Alsa is much better.

The difference between Alsa and OSS is that Alsa is designed to handle advanced features of modern hardware were OSS it has to be hacked into individual drivers.

I think that Alsa's problems are much more due to a lack of manpower rather then any sort of technical defficiencies.

Linux printing: much done and more to do (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 13, 2006 1:03 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

I should introduce you to some folks who have written code on both sides of both interfaces, like Alan Cox and Zach Brown. Strangely both of them believe that OSS is the confusing, inconsistent, hard-to-use mishmash of the two.

That said, i find the .asoundrc corner of alsa to be pretty unpleasant.